I don't know how viable a turbine would be for a car. Look at the Abrams tank, which needs 7 gallons of jet fuel just to light the engine. It's got a 500 gallon tank but I believe Abrams tanks in battle need a hefty supply line to support them, because they have to be refueled every four hours.

Interesting - according to whoever contributed to Wikipedia, the "micro turbine" is recognized as a promising technology for powering future hybrid electric vehicles. Efficiency of modern versions approaches that of reciprocating engines. Hotter exhaust is also more useful for cabin heating/cooling. Range Rover is apparently currently working on another turbine powered car (a turbine electric hybrid) as a follow up to their failed 1960 Rover turbine prototype that, lacking an electric intermediary stage, had terrible throttle response. So interesting! Wow, maybe batman was right after all, maybe jet cars will finally become reality. If the turbine has just 1 moving part like the electric intermediary, maintenance should really be a thing of the past.

I remember so long ago reading in Popular Mechanics how a backyard mechanic built a tiny jet for his glider so he wouldn't have to use a tow plane - and apparently it worked! So as a kid I read through all the jet engine articles in the encyclopedia and everything they had at the library.

Jets deliver decent fuel economy and incredible power density but they are the opposite of "tractable" in that they don't really make a lot of (low speed) torque and they don't handle changes in power output very well. However, I always figured a small jet running an appropriately geared generator would make an admirable hybrid powerplant for a car.

Then again diesel-electric locomotives were the original hybrid, and I've never heard of a jet-electric locomotive, so maybe it isn't such a good combo in reality.

As an electrical engineer, my peers raise their eyebrows when they learn of my interest in jet engines. I love reading about, and sometimes experimenting with, turbines and pulse jets, and an occasional rocket (OK, so it's not an air-breathing jet engine).

I enjoyed the construction article and I'd like to add to the commentaries an experience I had with a pulse jet and the useful lessons I learned. Please see the following link in Design News magazine:

Hey Ivan... I was hoping that someone who built one of these 'turbo-jets' would post. I've watched a few hours worth of the videos that the backyard mechanics have of these up on YouTube... They look like a fun toy to experiment with.

I am glad to see you have rethought your position. The opposite of wreckless is not meek, but the opposite of cavelier is thoughtful. Your cavelier attitude toward the safety of coworkers that was presented in your first post has been replaced by a more thoughtful response. I just hope the attitude shift was real and not contrived when you realized how silly the first post sounded.

Nick, The first wheel was used perhaps 3000 years ago. Major improvements only began 100 years ago. The Chinese had crude rokets 1000 years ago, but when Goddard did his pioneering work, with no gov help, he was ignored by all but the Germans. During WWII we became good at building aircraft, but few were state of the art. In 1957 I was a student at MIT & that year we got 'a kick in the arse' when we heard the 'beeps' from Sputnick I. We has a 'peaceful' satelite program, the Vangard, that was built by a naive Naval research center. The first two exploded on launch. Von Braun & his German team had tested V2's in New Mexico & were then in Huntsville developing short & medium range rockets. I know from those on the scene where Von Braun had his team 'working on the side' to develop a satelite via existing military-based launch vehicles. After the Vangard failure Von Braun said, 'I'll launch one in 30 days' - and he did. (My small company built electronics for the Saturn V and I spent a lot of time in Huntsville).

The Russians had a great exhibit of space hardware in Ft. Worth, TX in the 1980's and I was amazed at how crude some of their hardware was. Only after the breakup of the USSR did we know how many failures and losses of life that they had. And remember, that was 'the cold war'. In WW2 the atomic bomb was developed in just over 3 years. It took a team of scientists & engineers from all over the world to convince a mostly-ludite gov to proceed with a weapon that saved 1,000,000 American & Japanese lives AND held the USSR at bay until their economic collapse. (See 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb' by Richard Rhodes). Were there deaths during that development?. Yes, but the risk-result worth it? I think so.

The 'nanny state' tells us what to do. Are they qualified? NO !! DOE spends more on solar & wind than on advanced nuclear. We have more oil & gas than Saudi Arabia - more than 100 years worth - and we find more every year. Do you want 2 mil high-paying jobs? Ships exporting petrol products rather than importing them? Super-clean power generation, CNG for public transport, school busses, and passenger busses? LNG & petrol ships for exporting OUR products? You need only to look right here in the USA and Canada. I KNOW THE PETRO-CHEMICAL, PIPELINE, AND SHIPBUILD INDUSTRIES WELL.

(I would love to have my 1955 Triumph TR-2 or my 1964 Corvair. But,alas, we are no longer able to buy cars like those,)

Back in 1967 I was involved in a project with some friends who were attempting to build a pulsejet engine to drive a bicycle "a bit faster". WE did succeed in creating a device that gave us lots of heat and noise, but no worthwhile thrust. Of course, that was closely related to our not having access to any machining capabilities.

But it was quite educational. Did you know that at 500 degrees kerosene will explode just like gasoline? In addition, when it is that hot it does not require any special nozzle to create a mist in the combustion chamber.

The pity is that if we had been able to come up with a good set of reed valves the thing would have been very impressive indeed. But I can't imagine sitting in traffic right near a jet engine that was glowing a dull red. We certainly would have understood dealing with waste heat, and probably some other things as well.

Although we did have some "incidents", we never had any burns or other injuries.

I don't endanger lives, nor do I think that safety is something that should not be taken seriously. My co-workers' safety always supersedes mine.At the same time, the Shuttle missions suspended notwithstanding, it's obvious that you would have ended the Shuttle program, based upon your response. Attitudes, such as the one you illustrate would have resulted in all of us eating sauerkraut, had it not been for the myriad of brave people who fought for world freedom in World War-II, unless you’re naïve enough to believe that all military equipment was fully-tested to cover all safety contingencies back then.You pick up the pieces of mistakes, learn from them, and go one - you DON'T say, "boy, this is dangerous", and stop.

That's the point that I was making. It's your right to be meek; yet, it's also my right to embrace challenges.

A few weeks ago, Ford Motor Co. quietly announced that it was rolling out a new wrinkle to the powerful safety feature called stability control, adding even more lifesaving potential to a technology that has already been very successful.

It won't be too much longer and hardware design, as we used to know it, will be remembered alongside the slide rule and the Karnaugh map. You will need to move beyond those familiar bits and bytes into the new world of software centric design.

People who want to take advantage of solar energy in their homes no longer need to install a bolt-on solar-panel system atop their houses -- they can integrate solar-energy-harvesting shingles directing into an existing or new roof instead.

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